The Gulf wants to break free from the world’s data chokepoints

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Welcome to this week’s Fortune Gulf Brief.

We’ll be covering: The new data highways taking shape across the Gulf Dubai crypto exchange hit with U.S. sanctions over $4 billion Iran network UAE non-oil activity climbs to four-month high ADNOC L&S profits quadruple, outlook lifted again And, three things we enjoyed reading this week The GCC’s AI ambitions are creating a parallel infrastructure race—Gulf countries and telecom companies are trying not only to build enough computing power, but also to control the fibre and cable networks that carry the resulting data .

Currently, over 90% of Europe–Asia data and telecommunications traffic flows through Egypt and the subsea cable corridors converging at the Red Sea and Suez Canal region.

Today’s geopolitical instability is making the construction of alternative routes a strategic imperative.

The UAE, Saudi, and Qatar are all racing to build out these routes.

Qatari Ooredoo’s Fibre in the Gulf (FIG) system is on track to be the largest subsea cable system ever built in the GCC.

Set for completion in late 2027, the $500 million system will span almost 2,000 kilometers, linking all six GCC states and Iraq, while bypassing the Suez Canal and Bab-el-Mandeb strait entirely.

Ooredoo Group’s CEO Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo told me that the Iran war had “reinforced the proposition” of FIG.

But its proposition is not without challenges.

A key section of FIG is due to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, with Fakhroo acknowledging “we currently can’t get the cable-laying ships inside Hormuz.” Of course, a bigger question looms in the longer term: To what extent will the current war and its aftermath threaten the viability of the digital highways that are being built across and beyond the Gulf.

You can read my full interview with Fakhroo in my piece here .

And, in case you missed it, Fortune got the scoop last week on the news that Ooreedoo has teamed up with Nvidia and Nokia to launch a multi-billion-dollar AI compute and neo-cloud platform in Indonesia.